Young Love (Jaeyong)

6

The crowd was huge, mostly girls, but also about two hundred boys. Taeyong stopped somewhere at the end of the queue and waited for hours to be let in, finally he got to a counter where a lady looked at him strangely.

"Yes?" she asked.

"I'm here for the cooking competition," muttered Taeyong so she handed him the papers over as if she could catch something by touching him.

Taeyong ignored it and thanked, he went to a spot next to the wall and knelt on the carpet, there he filled in the form, then returned it to the lady. He was in group four, so it took another 3 hours of waiting till he was told to go to a huge conference room now turned into a kitchen with heaters and ingredients. The assistants were running around helping the ones who were struggling, while the TV crews were recording the whole thing.

Taeyong has received the number 76, so he walked to his spot and started immediately. That was one thing he was good in - cooking, he could concentrate on it, while the whole world disappeared around him. A boy next to him couldn't turn the oven on, the second one nearly cut his finger off instead of the carrot and Taeyong smiled to himself. Maybe he wasn't in a bad situation, maybe he could survive round one, and then who knows, meet Jaehyun again.

Jae's heart hammered loud when he noticed his stolen bracelet on the wrist of one of the contestants.

"Go to the hotel!" he shouted to the driver. "Immediately!"

He was all shaky when he watched how Doyoung recorded a boy in worn out black clothes, with dark hair falling out of the hood, who was working with such passion that Jae felt strange.

He hated each red light, each slow car in front of them, each traffic jam but soon he was in the hall, running through the building, while his assistant Doyoung and all the TV crews hurried to him. He ignored them storming the conference room. Some girls started to scream and squeak forgetting their work, the boy looked up unsure what had caused the sudden rumor while Jae passed tables and stopped right at his. The boy glanced up, their eyes met, Jae felt electricity running through his body to his feet.

"Hello do you want to try the dish?" asked the boy with a low voice and Jae trembled.

"What's this!" he said pointing at the bracelet at the boy's wrist.

"This?" the boy lowered his head a little. "A bracelet," he muttered and some people laughed.

Jae glanced left and right to find all cameras in the room focusing at them.

"Where do you have it from?" he asked sharply.

"From my mom, she died when I was five, so..." the boy took a deeper breath and Jae felt heat on his cheeks.

"So sorry," he muttered turning around.

"Do you want to try the dish?" asked the boy holding the bowl up.

Jae took a deep breath, he was sweating all over when he walked back, grabbed the chopsticks. He took a big bite. He wasn't expecting this quality, not worse than his own and he shivered.

"Sir, Mr. Jaehyun, please please, try mine!" the candidates from all sides started to shout to him putting their plates up.

"Any problems Mr. Jung?" asked a security coming closer.

"No, no I... I made a mistake," Jae turned around. "I'll try each candidate's food and decide who's in the next round," he said and everyone in the room but not the boy applauded.

"The time is over anyway," said Doyoung who was holding Jae's side like a shadow.

So Jae walked from table to table, some of the food was good, some so horrible Doyoung needed to hurry to him with tissues and water, but none was even close to what the boy had made. Jae hesitated when he wrote the numbers of the 50 people he wanted in the next round down. Then he read them out loudly.

Hi thank you for the support. I hope you like the story :)

How do you like the chapter? What do you think about Jaeyong's meeting? Will Taeyong be in the next round?

Much <3